What: A bus tour with stops for dance performances, drama and art displays staged in various locations in the flood-ravaged Lakeview neighborhood.

Where: Tours begin and end at the former site of Bruning's Restaurant, 1922 West End Park.

When: Buses leave promptly at 6 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, returning at approximately 8 p.m., when a family-style dinner will be available.

Admission: A suggested donation of $15. Reservations, required by today, can be made at www.ny2no.net/lakeview. For more information, call (504) 251-4968.

Organizers believe that the forlorn former site of Bruning's Restaurant, a popular West End eatery that was swept into Lake Pontchartrain during Hurricane Katrina, is the perfect place to begin and end "Lakeviews," a series of theatrical, musical and artistic performances being staged in the flood-ravaged Lakeview neighborhood Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.

At 6 p.m., audience members will board school buses for a short ride to Holt Cemetery, where Maritza Mercado-Narcisse will perform the first of a series of brief expressive dances. The next stop will be the damaged Lakeview Baptist Church, where actress Kathy Randels will stage a performance featuring church members, including her father, former pastor Dick Randels. High school art students from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and Metairie Park Country Day School will display portraits of neighborhood residents.

The buses then will go to Mouton Street, where Randels will present another performance, this one at her flood-damaged childhood home. Artist Jan Gilbert's nearby childhood home will be the site of "Biography of a House." Gilbert, known for her innovative use of photographs, will install a continuous series of family snapshots along the 8-foot flood line. During one of the three tours, Gilbert's 87-year-old mother, Helen, will revisit, for the first time since the flood, the home she fled during the Katrina evacuation.

After this stop, the buses will return to the Bruning's site for a sunset performance by actor/director Andrew Larimer, music by Chris Trepani and a "finale feast."

The series of on-site performances was suggested by renowned avant-garde theater director Richard Schechner during a visit in 2006, Gilbert said. She hopes it will be a "community rejuvenation ritual."

"The thing I want to stress is the real part of this," Gilbert said. "We were committed to whatever state of recovery we found -- a finished house, a raw house, an empty lot.

"There was much we couldn't control. We embraced it and welcomed it into the project. It's not hypothetical; it's about the here and now."

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Staff writer Doug MacCash can be reached at dmaccash@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3481.